HDCP 'Master Key' Found? Another Form Of DRM Drops Dead

from the what-a-waste dept

Chirag Mehta points us to the news that apparently some hackers have figured out the HDCP "master key," which effectively renders the DRM found in various HD formats useless. By this point, it should come as no surprise that such things get cracked. Is there any DRM that has actually ever been able to not get cracked at some point? It does make you wonder why the entertainment industry wastes so much money and effort on making such useless DRM products. For an industry that complains so much about how they're losing money all of the time, perhaps one way to save a little money is to stop spending it on useless, unworkable DRM.

Re: This particular form of DRM...

You mean Bluray's right?

DVD's play on anything today and there is virtually no copy protection on them, even the new ARccOS(that one that makes the PC show a DVD to have 20 or more gigabytes in size. No it doesn't have 20 gigabytes it just say it has.) can be easily bypassed.

Re: Re: Re:

Yeah, it's like hiding a key under the mat so that paying customers can enter, and hoping that no one else bothers to look under the mat.

i liken it to having a the key tethered to the lock on a box. you can use more and more sophisticated locks with more and more elaborate keys, but someone is going to either duplicate the contents of the box after it's opened, or cut the tether on the key and make duplicates.

pretty much all DRM is based on a faulty implementation of symmetric key crypto:
alice wants to send a secret message to bob, so she encrypts the message using a key she and bob share, and since only bob has the other key, only alice and bob can read the clear text. if carol wants to read the message, she needs to some how break the cipher or obtain a key from alice or bob.

with DRM, bob is not just the recipient, he's also the attacker. since alice sent bob a key, in the form of an approved device or player application, all bob has to do get the key out of the device or application.

the reason that crypto works is that both alice and bob don't want their keys to fall into the wrong hands.

the reason that DRM doesn't work is that while alice has a fiduciary interest in controlling the key, bob does not. indeed, bob may be actively trying to leak the key in question.

Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

Okay, before I get flamed, I HATE DRM, and I do not see anything wrong with backing up your own content, sharing your content with a friend, etc.

But, the logic above is similar to saying, "Why put a lock on your door when all locks can eventually be picked?" It's pretty simple. Even when easy software solutions for cracking are created, they don't go mainstream. The average user is not comfortable enough with technology to go through the process of cracking it, even when the crack is handed to them is a nicely wrapped software package. Most consumers want things to "just work," and they don't want to go through a lot of effort to copy a disc. For those people, which are currently the majority of technology consumers, DRM is effective.

Now, there are plenty of reasons why the industry should abandon DRM. The desire from consumers that I noted above, that a product should just work, is a very good reason. How many reports have we seen of major manufacturers breaking compatibility on their Blu-ray players with a firmware update? How many times are users forced to go through the uncomfortable, and somewhat unsafe-to-equipment, process of updating firmware just to play the latest disc? A user should not have to wait 15 minutes for a firmware update and risk bricking their player just to watch the movie they legally purchased. THOSE are factors that drive paying customers to piracy. When you make the legal solution more technologically complex, uncomfortable, and inconvenient than piracy, you will drive people away. Heck, the complexity of the DRM is, in a sense, training your users to be more tech-savvy, thus making it easier to make the jump to piracy.

The fact that DRM can be cracked is not the reason it is such a bad idea. It would be just as bad of an idea if it was perfectly secure. The problem is that it creates an unnecessary inconvenience for consumers and violates their property rights.

Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

Doesn't really match up. Lock picking is a very long or very noisy process even among expert lock smiths. Typically it's only done if you want to hide your presence or to open a door without causing damage. Or because it's your hobby.

There are plenty of tricks to quickly break a window, use a ladder, etc and gain access to your house.

But in all of these cases you are making it more difficult for the thieves to get in and steal your stuff. They must go through similar or different methods that threaten to expose them each time.

Whereas with software locks once one person has discovered to open it... everyone can open it instantly. Across the board everyone that wanted access has instant access. It's like one person picking the lock on one house in a city block then because he managed to do it and tell people how to pick locks for one particular company all the locks instantly unlock themselves once a thief walks up to it.

Re: Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

Doesn't really match up. Lock picking is a very long or very noisy process even among expert lock smiths. Typically it's only done if you want to hide your presence or to open a door without causing damage. Or because it's your hobby.

Do you understand the concept of the analogy? No, the concept of DRM and the lock on your front door doesn't match up exactly in every detail, but does match up enough to qualify as an appropriate analogy.

It's like one person picking the lock on one house in a city block then because he managed to do it and tell people how to pick locks for one particular company all the locks instantly unlock themselves once a thief walks up to it.

Not it isn't. The analogy between DRM and a house lock works because once DRM is cracked, someone who wants to access the media still has to go out of their way to find and use the crack. Once the DVD was cracked, people couldn't just pop a DVD into their computer and copy it. hegemon13's point was that DRM and front door locks discourage, but do not absolutely prevent unauthorized use.

Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

It's not really like locking or not locking your door, because not all locks have a master key that opens them all. (well OK a bump key can open most of them) If that were so and everybody had a key, it certainly would be "why bother locking your door." Also, every dishosest person has to physically travel to even try and pick your lock.

Re: Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

It's not really like locking or not locking your door, because not all locks have a master key that opens them all. (well OK a bump key can open most of them) If that were so and everybody had a key, it certainly would be "why bother locking your door." Also, every dishosest person has to physically travel to even try and pick your lock.

How does a master key or the phyiscal proximity relate at all to the analogy? Those factors are irrelevent. The analogy is simply this: DRM and the front door house locks are similar in that they both discourage, but do not absolutely prevent unauthorized use.

Besides, you basically invalidated your own point by noting the existance of the bump key. There actually is a kind of key that can open most front door locks and people still lock their front door. Why? Because they know it will still discourage people they don't know from getting in their house. Just...like...DRM. Companies know that DRM won't prevent a minority of people who really want to get around it, but they know it will prevent most people.

(This says nothing about the effectiveness or business justification for using DRM. I'm just addressing the validity of the analogy.)

Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

"The average user is not comfortable enough with technology to go through the process of cracking it, even when the crack is handed to them is a nicely wrapped software package"

DRM is a lock that is always broken (thus far, at least) by the people it is intending to keep out. The problem is that the lock itself often causes a problem for the "average user" you speak of above. It has been shown over and over again that these people will go to legitimate channels even if the lock is not there - just because it is much easier for them to do so. The movie industry, for instance, is trying to use DRM to prevent movies from ending up on Bit Torrent - well, the users that use Bit Torrent are the ones that are capable of finding and using the cracks for the DRM and the "average users" do not use Bit Torrent anyway.

The result is that the average joe that buys a DVD cannot play it on his computer with a non-compliant monitor and has to sit through 30 minutes of previews and legal threats while the guy that uses Bit Torrent can watch it anywhere and the movie starts while his popcorn is still warm (oh, wait, didn't all the corn farmers go out of business or something?).

Re: Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

"DRM punishes your customers, not the people that download copies."

And that's really the crux of the issue. It's why DRM serves no real purpose. Those that aren't going to use it because they aren't "technologists" aren't going to infringe anyway. Those that are, are going to crack the DRM.

More importantly, I think the argument can be made that including DRM on a DVD/movie/CD/software actively paints a target on it for "pirates". You're inviting infringement, IMO. I imagine that there is a certain amount of satisfaction that comes from watching a cracked movie because it's cracked....

Re: Re: Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

"DRM punishes your customers, not the people that download copies."

And that's really the crux of the issue. It's why DRM serves no real purpose. Those that aren't going to use it because they aren't "technologists" aren't going to infringe anyway. Those that are, are going to crack the DRM.

More importantly, I think the argument can be made that including DRM on a DVD/movie/CD/software actively paints a target on it for "pirates". You're inviting infringement, IMO. I imagine that there is a certain amount of satisfaction that comes from watching a cracked movie because it's cracked....

Re: Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

The problem is that the lock itself often causes a problem for the "average user" you speak of above. It has been shown over and over again that these people will go to legitimate channels even if the lock is not there - just because it is much easier for them to do so.

First off, whether you did it intentionally or not, you started up by stating there was a problem with the analogy between DRM and front door locks and then justified it with a statement about the problem of DRM. I happen to agree that the net result of DRM is negative, both for the consumer and for the media companies. But this has nothing to do with the validity of the analogy.

Secondly, I would start off by agreeing that people do like convenience and they're willing to pay for it even if there is a free alternative. But do you honestly think that a huge number of "average users" wouldn't be copying DVDs to their computers if they weren't DRMed?

We're not talking absolutes here. There is no single type of "average user". One one side of the continuum are people that actually do the cracking. Then there are people who can find and feel comfortable running the cracks. Then you have people who can find and feel comfortable with downloading the cracked media. And way farther down are the technically illiterate who are lucky to find the play button on their DVD players. The point is that the target "audience" for DRM starts off with the technilliterates and moves over on the continuum, while diminishing in effect, to the crackers.

Re: Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

Yeah, that's like, hey, I've got all me booty, but I don't want them pirates to steal it from me. So, instead of having it at the bank, I'm going to bury it on an island, so it's really hard to get at it without a ship. Any landlubbers who want to have my booty will have to ask my permission to get on my ship so I'll take them. That'll keep it safe from all those damn pirate ships on the sea...

Re: Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

"The problem is that the lock itself often causes a problem for the "average user" you speak of above."

I totally agree. That's why I said the same thing in my post.

Where you're wrong is in the assumption that DRM is trying to lock out power users. The industry knows that such users will crack the protection quickly. They also know that the average user won't seek out the crack, so DRM succeeds in locking the content for the majority of users. I'm not saying that it is good. I am answering Mike's question of why they bother to spend money on it.

The point of my analogy, as Hulser pointed out (thanks!), was that I don't lock my door expecting to keep out the thief who really wants to get in. I do it to prevent the majority of people from trying. A weak lock is enough to keep most people out. The strongest lock in the world won't stop a master thief.

Re: Re: Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

Ah, but when you are keeping your PAYING CUSTOMER from using the stuff in question.... THAT'S when DRM starts having the problem of illegality with it.

If they could make a DRM that wouldn't hose my computer, INSIST that I keep the EASILY SCRATCHED DISC in the CD/DVD drive, nor had an 'always connected' internet connection?

THEN I would be fine with DRM! The problem is that those 3 things are being done and are a PAIN IN THE ASSHOLE to people like myself, who wish to PROTECT OUR INVESTMENT by BACKING UP THE GAMES AND DISCS!

Last I heard, it wasn't illegal to protect your investment in something, DMCA or no. in fact, if the DMCA was CHALLENGED on that basis, with DRM being challenged as well..... I would say a judge would BAN DRM as being illegal.

Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

Number One problem with DRM that I've found; a game you have lawfully purchased suddenly stops working. In most cases the cause is because a key server maintained by the company is off line. Or even worse; the company goes out of business. Or; you don't have or want an internet connection during your gaming session. All of these scenarios have happened and will continue to happen with this kind of drm.

Re: Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

Wow. Does anyone ever read a complete post before replying? I state these issues. I am not pro-DRM. The point of my post was to answer Mike's question of why they spend money on DRM when it will be cracked. I then go on to explain the real reasons of why the pursuit of DRM is so misguided. Reasons just like the one you present.

Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

Here's where your analogy is wrong... When it's my house, and my lock - that's one thing. This is a case of someone ELSE putting a lock on my house, making it inconvenient for me to use my house, claiming I have full access to it - and being suprised when I decide to just make my own door...

Re: Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

Here's where your analogy is wrong... When it's my house, and my lock - that's one thing. This is a case of someone ELSE putting a lock on my house, making it inconvenient for me to use my house, claiming I have full access to it - and being suprised when I decide to just make my own door...

Re: Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

But that user still has to be tech-savvy enough to pursue torrents, newsgroups, or some other source. Yes, that is a growing percentage of the population, but still small compared to the DVD-buying population, despite how the RIAA whines.

Everything else you said, I agree with. It is stupid and misguided to release DRMed products. But it is stupid and misguided because it drives away legitimate customers, not because it can be cracked.

Re: Re: Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

hegemon13..... GAMECOPYWORLD.... You don't need to pursue torrents, newsgroups, etc. anymore to get game cracks for your games.

As to getting the actual game in question? Don't need torrents either. A lot of people are now putting the things on Hotfile, Rapidshare, etc. with OBFUSCATED FILE NAMES, to keep them from being removed.

Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

Yes!!! The application of DRM violates the property rights of the consumer. It also violates the consumer's due process by allowing companies to assume police powers, act as a biased judge, and unilaterally impose exorbitant penalties.

Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

The average user is not comfortable enough with technology to go through the process of cracking it, even when the crack is handed to them is a nicely wrapped software package.

I'm not sure that's true. I've seen forum threads from people who know very little about computers but want to back up their DVDs, and they're directed to programs like DVD Fab and are quite willing and able to use them. You only have to know enough to be able to download and install software, and how many people are incapable of that any more? The subset who might be interested in doing things prohibited by DRM is probably substantial, and almost certainly growing.

Regardless of the current numbers, the number of people interested and able to work on cracking DRM is going to keep increasing, and the number of people willing and able to use existing DRM cracks is probably going to approach 100% of the industrialized nations as the older generations (sorry, insensitive) die off. The effectiveness of DRM has peaked, I would guess.

The fact that DRM can be cracked is not the reason it is such a bad idea.

Re: Keeps "honest" people "honest"...

Most consumers want things to "just work," and they don't want to go through a lot of effort to copy a disc. For those people, which are currently the majority of technology consumers, DRM is effective.
For those people, DRM is totally unnecessary. Why do we need DRM, if the target group, that you claim DRM is for, doesn't do anything that goes against the DRM.

DRM was intended to stop copyright infringement, that and they wanted control over what you can and can't do with their "Intellectual ""Property""", such as "no you can't play this movie on this tv, because it isn't HDCP compatible".

It succeeds at the latter (to great annoyance of the legal buyers of the product), but fails on the former. They've spend millions of dollars in a system, that only one person have to break. They've spend countless of man-hours working on a product that's incredibly flawed, and its only result is that it pisses off their legal customers, turning them towards piracy, because the pirates can offer a superior product, and does nothing to stop piracy.

A DRM'ed product, is a product that's encrypted, and to help the users of that product to use it, they give you the key with it.

It's an 'uncrackable' safe, with the key taped to it.
"Here, have a movie, it's inside this safe. Oh and the combination is AB123BA, but ssssh mum's the word."

DRM is flawed from the very get-go, and there will NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER be a DRM system that can't be cracked. Other than a system, where even the legal users can't get at the product.
"Here, have a movie, it's inside this safe, which is locked on the inside, and there is no way for you to open it on the outside."

This is not attack at you hegemon13, because I know that you are against DRM, it's just a correction.

"The problem is that it creates an unnecessary inconvenience for consumers and violates their property rights."

Agreed, but that has not been enough to stop the companies from using it.
The fact that it also doesn't actually work to keep the people who will copy and distribute the material from doing so, should be the decisive factor for these people.
While they like to claim they are losing money to piracy, the only money that they are actually definitively quantifiably losing is the money they waste on DRM.

Technical effectiveness is not the point

The value for DRM for the entertainment industry is that DRM + anti-circumvention laws = a legal weapon with which they can kill many (if not most) disruptive technologies that they don't like.

Comcast, for example, has started encrypting nearly all of the channels I get from them. Consequently, I had to "rent" a cable card from Comcast for my Tivo and my MythTV implementation is becoming nearly useless. Because my TV channels are now "protected" with Comcast's DRM, it would be nearly impossible for someone to come along with a disruptive business model that re-purposes the content I pay for without first getting Comcast's permi$$ion. If they did, Comcast would litigate the pants off of them.

There are many less-then-intelligent people in the entertainment business that think DRM helps prevent piracy. But the smart ones know the real value of DRM is it can be used to outlaw new business models that they don't like. Whether or not it can be cracked is much less relevant. That's why they freak out at any sign that anti-circumvention laws might be weakened.

Re: Technical effectiveness is not the point

"Because my TV channels are now "protected" with Comcast's DRM, it would be nearly impossible for someone to come along with a disruptive business model that re-purposes the content I pay for without first getting Comcast's permi$$ion."

Drowning Man

A drowning man will buy a life jacket from anyone who offers one. It doesn't really matter if the life jacket being offered is made of cement and will pull him down faster. A drowning man wants hope, and will pay any amount for anything that gives hope.

There are a lot of DRM companies out there selling cement life jackets to industries that are drowning. The industries are buying anything that gives them the hope that they can once again force people to buy expensive shiny disks.

Re: Drowning Man

Sony laptop

I'm glad they did this. I have a Sony laptop with Blu-ray that cannot play alot of blu-ray disc's due to that damn DRM crap. I buy my dvd's and still cannot play them. The only people that DRM hurts are the ones foolish enough to pay for DVD's.

Plenty stupid with DRM, but nothing wrong with it

There's plenty that is stupid with DRM, but there's nothing actually wrong with it.

The only thing that is wrong is the privilege of copyright, and the DMCA that prohibits the circumvention of 'technical protection measures' that make even a weedy effort to impede the efforts of possessors to make copies.

Without copyright or the DMCA, there'd be no problem. DRM would soon be regarded as crazy as a perpetual motion machine.

It's because there are crazy laws on the statute books that say it's possible to legally prevent people copying what they have, that people then assume it's technically possible to prevent it.

We must remember that it's only possible to prevent people copying what they DO NOT HAVE. This is a natural law. You cannot both give someone access to a work AND prevent them communicating it or making a copy of it.

Re: Analog still lives

I had the same exact problem with my Xbox 360 after I got the new version with HDMI. The funny part is I was using component before running at full 1080p playing games, DVDs, and HDDVDs and not once it complained. Now I have complaint hardware and it has a problem?

Re: Re: Analog still lives

1) "Prior to HDCP, digital interfaces provided the same digital content without content protection between the player and display. As HDCP was introduced as a content protection standard, many non-HDCP-compliant devices were rendered unable to display HDCP-protected content unless fitted with a device to circumvent HDCP content protection"
-and-
2) "The HDCP standard is more restrictive than the FCC's Digital Output Protection Technology requirement. HDCP bans compliant products from converting HDCP-restricted content to full-resolution analog form, presumably in an attempt to reduce the size of the analog hole."

Purpose of DRM

The purpose of DRMis to make money for the purveyors of DRM.
The entertainment industry are the DRM industry's dupes in this regard.

HDCP was made just strong enough to enable anti-circumvention lawsuits. If you read this article you will realise that they are either stupid or they deliberately made it weaker than it could have been. As it stands the level of protection is just high enough to prevent casual breaking by ordinary customers but no stronger. Beyond that its only purpose is to enable legal action.

Re:

Re:

I think Steam hasn't been broken because authentication (and, more importantly, multiplayer games) has to pass through their servers. Some people are able to circumvent that by basically severing steam from the game and then playing multiplayer on lan or (pirate) dedicated servers. Obviously that game will never connect to an official server and even if it does, the account will probably be suspended.

Re:

You can play offline. You dont need the CD. Their servers are a heck load more stable than EA's. The games are cheaper. Updates are painless. Steam Backups FTW!

Hell - I love their DRM! Give me more. And take note I now spend about 3-4 times the budget on Indie games and reasonably priced mainstreams than I used to.

Cracked almost every retail game I bought for a no-CD experience - never even googled on stripping DRM from Steam games. Business model for Steam = Epic Win. Shame the $$ still go to stupid development studios like EA... but that's why I now spend as much or more on the Indie games.

Re:

So yeah, nobody cracked steam. Thanks for the nonexamples, guys. I'm basically looking for I cracked Steam and all the games I want I can have. You can't even get 40% of the games on Steam, many of the torrents are dead in the water, or don't exist.

There's Something about techdirt, its readers apparently defend Mike's comments to a T no matter what.

Re: Re:

As noted above, DRM stops casual thieves.

I'm using "thieves" as the industry views it.

"It does make you wonder why the entertainment industry wastes so much money and effort on making such useless DRM products." -- CONTROL. You keep omitting this obvious answer as to motives. I'm sure it's not because you don't know it. As a point in the controversy, it's overwhelming.

I'll just go on to answer for the *next* stage of DRM: The data from Blu-Ray disc to monitor is currently encrypted even on *hardware* busses. That's not a minor obstacle. But currently, personal machines -- and operating systems -- are still under *personal* control. It's easy to see that another increment of hardware protection in combination with more robust encryption will in fact, become *unbreakable*. You can assert that it can't be, from history and "logic", but I think that we're within sight of it being true. Remove an unlimited number of automated attempts plus access to working keys, and the problem catapults to orders of magnitude tougher. Getting keys by scraping off IC lids and probing 45nm chips is going to be limited to laboratories with the most exotic of equipment, if possible at all. -- Another point being overlooked is that the gov't will soon *outlaw* all non-compliant operating systems. Again, one can assert that won't happen, but it overlooks the overwhelming motive I start with above, as *the* most important consideration, compared to which money and effort are irrelevant: CONTROL.

Mike: your own "copyright infringement" DRM of the gravatars has been broken! In a series of 4 comments by hegemon13 in flattened view, are *two* gravatars. I'll guess he incidentally used two machines, with differing User Agent strings. While I have that in a pull-down menu thanks to Noscript, I've never tried it (-- since I usually post only once per topic; please consider that as a FIX). But now that the info is out, we're in for another increment of protection from someone stealing a poster's identity, right?

Re: As noted above, DRM stops casual thieves.

No lock is unbreakable. If all else fails, you still have brute force attacks. That's true for digital and physical locks.

"Remove an unlimited number of automated attempts plus access to working keys"

First, how do you physically limit me from trying to break your encryption? You could have a self-destruct mechanism like the CPS arcade machines had, but, guess what?, they were broken eventually.

Secondly, having no access to keys is nothing new in cryptography. It's called a ciphertext-only attack, where you only have access to the ciphered data (no plaintexts, no keys, and no way of making your own ciphered texts). As part of my cryptography class, I had to decipher a text that was ciphered using a VigenÃ¨re cipher, with nothing other than a (conveniently very long) ciphered text. That yielded not only the ciphered text, but also the key. Was it tough? Hell yeah! But it was done in two weeks. What I mean is: with enough effort, it will be cracked.

"Another point being overlooked is that the gov't will soon *outlaw* all non-compliant operating systems."

So they outlaw it...and how the heck will they enforce it? Oh, I know: the same way they enforce copyright. That will work. Or are you suggesting that they can destroy every copy of Linux (or BSD, or OpenSolaris or whatever) in the world?

"your own "copyright infringement" DRM of the gravatars has been broken!"

You only noticed now? If I disconnect from the internet for 5 minutes, my icon will change. Big fracking deal. That won't help anyone impersonate anyone else however, because (I think) Techdirt controls what icon is displayed. They must be associated to some id or something. Unless you can, somehow, hijack someone else's id (which is entirely possible, but completely pointless), I don't see that happening.

Re: As noted above, DRM stops casual thieves.

There is such a thing as unbreakable encryption, but it's not usable for DRM. Yes, they could start putting the DRM into the hardware such that you have to take stuff apart and resolder it, but the more obnoxious such measures become, the more incentive there is to overcome them.

Knockoff manufacturers from China will probably have no qualms about selling hardware that ignores the DRM restrictions. Is the US really ready to go to a trade war over such an issue? I guess it's possible, but I predict the rest of the world will just pass us by.

Re: As noted above, DRM stops casual thieves.

It's easy to see that another increment of hardware protection in combination with more robust encryption will in fact, become *unbreakable*. You can assert that it can't be, from history and "logic", but I think that we're within sight of it being true.

encryption is not DRM. DRM is based on a faulty implementation of encryption. DRM treats the intended recipient and the attacker as the same person. once the key is in the hands of the attacker, ALL encryption breaks down.

you can add hardware support, 4096bit keys, retina scans, and satellite thermal imaging, and it won't make a bit of difference because at the end of the day you are locking your precious cargo in a box and handing that box AND THE KEY to the attacker. there is never a happy ending to that story.

Re: the gov't will soon *outlaw* all non-compliant operating systems.

The funny part about your post is that steam effectively allowing you to play pirated games! Look up to situation with the game Hitman. The original DRM on the games was a pain, so instead of just giving Steam game sans DRM they gave them the game with DRM and the crack that disables the DRM

The funny part about your post is that steam effectively allowing you to play pirated games! Look up to situation with the game Hitman. The original DRM on the games was a pain, so instead of just giving Steam game sans DRM they gave them the game with DRM and the crack that disables the DRM

Wow

Stopped me

I stopped purchasing DVD's years ago as well. I used to play my DVD's on My computer because the resolution on the screen at the time was better then My regular TV but the DRM prevented me from playing them on the Computer so there was no point in purchasing DVD's anymore. Kind of bad for the minions of the MPAA, I never have bootlegged movies I felt I was getting good value for my money but with the advent of DRM I stopped purchasing DVD's all together,

great

please get your facts straight before you jump to conclusions

Mike,

If you had read more than a paragraph or two about this story, you would know that there is no such thing as a "master key" for HDCP, let alone that one was discovered.

What caused this hack was nothing more than the usual problem with DRM, which is that those who demand it don't pay for it. The makers of HDCP devices took the lazy and cheap route of all using the same (undoubtedly lowest-price) chips, which happened to all have the same key in them because it was cheaper to manufacture them that way. So discovering that key caused *many* HDCP devices to be hacked, though not all.

Hollywood would not have approved a DRM like that of DVDs that is vulnerable to discovery of a single set of keys. They did learn that lesson. But they haven't been effective in preventing the hardware makers from cutting corners in design even of "standards"-based DRMs. In other words, the studios are getting what they paid for.

Anyone taking odds on Bill coming back to admit that he was wrong on this one?

What caused this hack was nothing more than the usual problem with DRM, which is that those who demand it don't pay for it. The makers of HDCP devices took the lazy and cheap route of all using the same (undoubtedly lowest-price) chips, which happened to all have the same key in them because it was cheaper to manufacture them that way. So discovering that key caused *many* HDCP devices to be hacked, though not all.

Again, this turns out to be 100% false.

Hollywood would not have approved a DRM like that of DVDs that is vulnerable to discovery of a single set of keys. They did learn that lesson.

Anyone taking odds on Bill coming back to admit that he was wrong on this one?

What caused this hack was nothing more than the usual problem with DRM, which is that those who demand it don't pay for it. The makers of HDCP devices took the lazy and cheap route of all using the same (undoubtedly lowest-price) chips, which happened to all have the same key in them because it was cheaper to manufacture them that way. So discovering that key caused *many* HDCP devices to be hacked, though not all.

Again, this turns out to be 100% false.

Hollywood would not have approved a DRM like that of DVDs that is vulnerable to discovery of a single set of keys. They did learn that lesson.

Re: Re: Re: please get your facts straight before you jump to conclusions

3.
This is a forty times forty element matrix of fifty-six bit
4.
hexadecimal numbers.
5.

6.
To generate a source key, take a forty-bit number that (in
7.
binary) consists of twenty ones and twenty zeroes; this is
8.
the source KSV. Add together those twenty rows of the matrix
9.
that correspond to the ones in the KSV (with the lowest bit
10.
in the KSV corresponding to the first row), taking all elements
11.
modulo two to the power of fifty-six; this is the source
12.
private key.
13.

14.
To generate a sink key, do the same, but with the transposed
15.
matrix.
16.

Customer is the punching bag!

I've had games stop working because of having software that the DRM objected to. Except I had not heard of that software (Daemon Tools) nor did I have it on my computer.

I've had DVD/HDD recorders shut down recording due to copyright flags, when the video was coming from video cameras, definitely not copyrighted material.

I work where I have no internet access for 3 weeks at a time, and even Steam has given me grief when I forgot to go to offline mode before leaving home. (Tells me no internet, switch to offline mode, then says it can't connect to the Steam Network when I try to start in offline mode.) Three weeks with no Steam games!!

And of course I cannot create copies of my games and movies to use while the originals are safely stored away.

Re: Just a thought ....

Subject

DRM is the biggest corporate-sponsored reverse psychology/sociology ever inflicted on the human race, and the biggest winners are pirates and laywers.

Design a technology and legal system that eliminates consumer rights and forces paying customers to re-buy content they've already paid for, buy brand new electronics so their rights can be further eliminated, enforce the laws that the consumers will never actually own anything that they pay for and that they are only paying for the right to use it, and that the corporations reserve the right to take it all away if they want to. Corporations should then brainwash the media and politicians and get the message out that it's a "win win" situation for the corporations AND customers.

DRM then turns off former paying customers and future customers. It then becomes a normal way of life to simply download and enjoy downloaded shared-content without any restrictions compared to the highly restricted, crippled and useless DRM-laden legally paid for content.

Corporations then sue customers, but the cost of suing people costs more than what the actual lawsuits pay out. who cares! Scare your customers by making an example out of a few people, and say "we've struck a tremendous blow against piracy" by shutting down 100 pirate web sites that no ones ever care about or heard of before.

Lawyers are rolling in the dough. Former customers are still pirating. Corporations get nothing.

DRM is great for pirates and lawyers, but very bad for corporations. I'm all for DRM and I hope the corporations never wake up because if they completely remove DRM, everyone would go back to paying for content, less people would be sharing, and it end up trickling back underground with very little choices in content choice and availability.

Bill's apology

Bill's "apology" is on his website as follows:

*I made a comment on a popular tech blog that there wasn’t a single master key. My comment was incorrect. At the time, I did not properly understand the nature of the hack, and I did not make the distinction between master keys that are actually present on client devices by design (a la DVDs and CSS) versus those that are designed to exist only within the confines of the root-of-trust facility (DCP in the cast of HDCP). However, the author of this blog piece also failed to make that distinction and generally under-researched and mischaracterized the hack, in his usual fashion. For that reason, I won’t name the blog or author.

One more time, just to be sure :D

HDCP MASTER KEY (MIRROR THIS TEXT!)

This is a forty times forty element matrix of fifty-six bit
hexadecimal numbers.

To generate a source key, take a forty-bit number that (in
binary) consists of twenty ones and twenty zeroes; this is
the source KSV. Add together those twenty rows of the matrix
that correspond to the ones in the KSV (with the lowest bit
in the KSV corresponding to the first row), taking all elements
modulo two to the power of fifty-six; this is the source
private key.